I paced back and forth in my parents' living room, wondering if Lew would call once he got the flowers. Would he be angry and yell at me? Or would he be willing to talk to me, to listen to me while I told him all the things I'd figured out while I was away?

The day wore on and I kept pacing, until I was as worn as the day. I had lines I should have been learning, but every time I sat down and tried to distract myself with the script, my mind kept wandering away to memories of Lew.

"Mike, come have dinner," my mother called from the dining room. "Stop wearing the finish off my floor."

I flushed and slunk my ass into the dining room and fell into my old seat. It was just the three of us today. After the crowds of the past few days, it was a relief, even if it was uncomfortable to sit beside my father knowing that he'd probably be mad I'd sent flowers to Lew. He thought I should leave well enough alone and I'd been very plainly told that I'd already caused enough damage there and should keep to myself. I'd gotten a lecture about not making a bad situation worse yesterday like I was still in high school.

Mom brought out the food, some kind of stir-fry--her go-to when she didn't have a lot of time or energy for cooking. "I thought we might go down to the park tonight. Get some coffee, feed the ducks. Get out of the house and do something as a family."

"Lianne," Dad complained.

"It'll be good for you," Mom told him firmly. "No phones, no visitors, no entertaining. You have the reading of the will tomorrow, let's take a couple of hours to just be a family."

"No phones?" I asked, my heart sinking.

"You can't turn your phone off for just a couple of hours?" Mom demanded.

"Um." I didn't want to tell her about the flowers with Dad sitting right across from me. "What if my agent needs me?"

"She knows you're here for your grandmother's funeral." Dad didn't have a lot of tolerance for the demands of my job.

I put a forkful of chicken and vegetables in my mouth and chewed to buy myself some time. Except it didn't help--I couldn't come up with an excuse why I needed my phone with me. "I don't know, I'm kind of tired."

"Mike—" Dad began, but Ma stopped him with a quiet, "Graham." He didn't like it, but he left me alone after that, aside from a little grumbling.

Lew still hadn't called or texted about the flowers.

After we'd eaten, I help Mom clean up, falling into the old routines of evening chores like no time had passed at all.

“Come to the park with us,” she wheedled. “It’ll do you good to get out and do something normal.”

“I don’t think Dad’s too happy with me,” I said shortly.

“He just lost his mom, he’s a little tender right now.”

“And he liked Lew.”

She put her arm around me. “He did. He still does. He was really excited about grandchildren, couldn’t wait to be a grandpa.”

Yeah, Lew had been all about having kids too. God, did he think I’d dumped him over wanting kids? I hoped not. I didn’t want them right away, or hadn’t back then, but I’d always known I’d have some someday. “Yeah, I screwed that up too, didn’t I?”

“We make the best choices we can in the moment, with what we know and what we need. Sometimes those choices aren’t the ones that will be right for us later in life, but they’re the best ones we can make in the moment. But you have to work from where you are now, not where you would have been if you’d made a different choice. Your dad will come back around, you know he loves you. And maybe someday you’ll meet someone else and you’ll have a chance to work through all these feelings I think you still have for Lew. And you’ll go into that relationship a wiser man than you were and you’ll make different mistakes, but you’ll learn from them too. Just like you learned things with Lew. It’s not the end of the world.”

No, I supposed it wasn’t. Her words did make me feel better, but they also made me realize that I didn’t want to go into another relationship and try to make it better on the bones of my broken one with Lew. I wanted to fix that one, be better this time. Be the alpha I’d always told myself I was and had failed miserably at being.

And if Lew still didn’t want me, then I’d take my lesson and carry it forward, but I suspected that I’d never find another omega like Lew in my lifetime.